


Lighting the Way

by coaldustcanary



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/pseuds/coaldustcanary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time when Archmaester Walgrave had every right to the mask and rod of black iron, symbolizing his mastery of ravencraft.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lighting the Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [penandfink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/penandfink/gifts).



> Prompt: A peek at what, exactly, the Citadel is up to...with a little touch of another prompt, asking for reflection on the figures whose agendas created Robert's Rebellion. (Minor spoilers for AFFC & ADWD.)

He would never admit it to another soul, but the truth was that he hated the ravens.

At his desk in the cavernous room that housed hundreds of ravens, Walgrave scowled at the fluttering shadows that stirred around him, the night lit only by a pair of fat candles at arm’s length. The birds were vile and vicious; even the well-scoured and expansive Citadel rookery stank of shit and filth and rotted scraps, and the birds pecked and poked at anyone unwary, often drawing blood. Though both lords and smallfolk thought the ravens clever, all but a few rare specimens only possessed an ugly cunning that let them compete for food, scream louder than a fellow bird, and make their risky way to a small number of locations. Whispering instructions into a bird’s ear, as the smallfolk would swear the Maesters did, would get your nose sliced off and the tip eaten for your troubles. One had to trust that the bird would remember, through base instinct, how to get back to where it had been hatched or raised.

No, even after many winters come and gone, years of knowledge accumulated, and all that he had seen, he did not trust the ravens. And yet it was to these creatures that all the secrets of the realm were entrusted! None would ever accept tucking a precious letter into the bridle band of some lord’s palfrey and giving it a belt across the hindquarters to send it galloping home with an important message, he thought sourly. A fine lord’s mount might well be brighter than the be-damned birds, though, and far less offensive to his senses.

A bird high up in the eaves squawked, and Walgrave sighed bitterly as he swiftly sorted through the tiny scrolls littering his desk, lost in memory. Once he had been a foolish boy and the birds had been the furthest thing from his mind. He had played at learning, and spent more time in the taverns of Oldtown than in study in the Citadel. He had drank, diced away his small pittance of support money from his father, and whored. The experienced women in the brothels of the city were a far cry from the flighty maids he had shyly tumbled back home at Greenstone. He’d hardly known what to say when a dark-haired beauty had chosen _him_ from the corner of the common room to take to her bed, and he had nearly been struck dead with fear that next fuzzy-headed morning when he learned that she was the niece of the Lord of the High Tower. He’d expected, then, to find himself dead, imprisoned, or at best, whipped out of the city by Hightower men. When Lord Larrent Hightower – Defender of the Citadel and Lord of the Port - had summoned him, he had gone soberly, though shaking, to meet his inevitable doom.

It had not been the sort of meeting he expected. A chiding lecture had come, but no anger, and no threats. The old lord had peered at Walgrave over his books in his tower-top retreat, a curious look come over his stately features, while his heir Leyton looked on impassively. Walgrave remembered his words as if they had been spoken only yesterday.

_”An Estermont, hmm? Don’t look at me like that, boy, you’re a novice, not yet chained. For now, you have a name. An old name. A name that still commands respect, though you’ve not been acting much like you deserve any. But my dear niece saw something in you, and though she is an impetuous girl, she has a discerning eye. But no matter. Will you serve, boy? That is the question.”_

He had not known how to answer the old man. How could he have understood the question then, as the mere child he had been? He shook his head slightly in remembrance, the thin parchment of scrolls rustling beneath his still-deft fingers. But the late Lord Hightower had seen something in him, and in the weeks after his summons to his lordship’s chamber, he had found himself meeting a handful of men of the Citadel, Maesters and novices, and even an Archmaester or two, who seemed to be far more interested in the young, undistinguished novice he was then than they ought, by rights, have been. Somehow, he intuited that he was being put to a test. Somehow, he realized, when he was summoned back to the High Tower, he had passed it.

_”Know three things, Walgrave Estermont. There is power, and there is power unseen. There is wisdom, and there is the wisdom of patience. There is magic, of the valyrian steel link you will forge, and yet there is an older magic still. The Citadel was long the chain that bound the Seven Kingdoms together even when they were still seven kingdoms. Now Fire and Blood are the crude mortar that joins us, and we have tolerated it long enough. We are going to carefully, cautiously, and prudently fragment the Seven Kingdoms into kingdoms once more, for the good of the realm and its people.”_

_“And the Citadel?” he had asked, a hint of challenge in his voice. He should have known better, but Lord Lerrence only smiled thinly._

_“And, yes, the good of the Citadel.”_

He had learned so much that night – of the histories unspoken. When he was chained, years later, the ritual of it had been something of a disappointment, he remembered dispassionately. But when he had learned their plans for him, the role he might play, he had found his heart sinking. 

_Not the damned birds, he had wailed internally._

In the end, however, his opinion of such things had mattered not a whit. He harbored no illusions; in order to accomplish what he and his new brothers hoped to achieve within his own lifetime, he had known years ago that he would have to sacrifice his preferences and pleasures and take up the study of ravencraft. Over the years, he had learned to feed and tend them, to mend their illnesses and broken wings, and to evaluate their ability to learn even as they fledged. He travelled the realm in the vigor of youth, from the Arbor’s plenty to the fastness of Last Hearth, to master each line of ravens. He learned the quirks of the Stormlands’ particularly gruff specimens and flightiness of the sleek Dornish breed, how to breed for speed, for soundness, and for what little sense could be coaxed from their tiny minds.

In time, he was mentored personally by Archmaester Olyvar, who had risen from low birth as the son of a Marches dirt-grubber to the black iron mask and rod. To his great disgust, Olyvar had loved the filthy creatures. The man’s humble origins had not offended Walgrave – as a fifth son, even of the old and respected House Estermont, he harbored no illusions about the importance of his own place in the world. Three sons had been enough for his father to keep with him – his just-elder brother Baelor had been sent very young to the Faith, and Walgrave had been destined for Oldtown as soon as he had begun showing a modicum of sense and cleverness. Olyvar’s talent stood him Walgrave’s esteem, but his emotional attachment to the birds had been absurd.

When he had learned all he could from the old man, he whispered a few words to Maester Ebrose, trained so thoroughly in the art of healing and of harm, and, according to plan, wise Olyvar had died in his sleep a few nights later. For his faithful service, Walgrave was placed in charge of the birds, and raised to Archmaester. It was a terrible pity, to be sure. He mourned for Olyvar in his own way. Over the years of his service he had grown to respect and even feel fond of the older man. But his time had passed. Walgrave could not, would not shirk his duties.

He had little time to consider the matter, in any case – it had been about that time when they had sent him his son. He had glimpsed Walys from time to time on his infrequent visits to the High Tower. He had favored his mother even as a child, the Seven be praised. That his father was an Archmaester was something of an open secret, and the similarity of their names – oh, how he had begged Allyria not to name the boy after him – had not gone unnoticed in certain quarters. That he was now the boy’s mentor raised many an eyebrow, but the truth was that Walgrave hardly knew the boy from his young compatriots, novices called Cressen and Colemon, like Walys tied by blood to House Hightower. He tutored them in ravencraft, as much as they would need for their links and more besides, but also he guided them into the circle of those dedicated to a new vision of Westeros.

_”We light the way,” Lord Lerrence had once reminded him when he confessed his trepidations. “And sometimes the light can be perilously dangerous to hold, but someone must.”_

Of course, he mused, it was all well and good for the Lord of the High Tower, who played both sides of the game, with his brother Gerold serving at the King’s pleasure, a loyal servant to the dragons even as the rest of his house plotted their downfall. Lord Hightower had only shrugged when the matter was broached by a brave young member of their circle, a student of history called Perestan.

_”He may protect the King, but he also protect us,” Lerrence had said gravely, pain in his voice. “He knows what we are about, but he keeps his vows with care. They may call him the Bull for his charge into battle; his kinsmen know that he bears a great burden for us all on his yoke.”_

In his own time, Walgrave had discovered the keen hurt of that kind of service. Like ravens bearing messages, in time he had sent his young charges out into the world. Cressen had gone to Walgrave’s home Stormlands, judging his patience fit for the impetuous Baratheons. Coleman he ensured would be sent to the Eyrie, where his meticulous nature would appeal to Jon Arryn’s sense of honor. And Walys, his own, clever boy, of whom he had grown so proud… Walys he had sent to the North, where his persuasive, nimble tongue might unbend even the frozen Rickard Stark. If they were to break the kingdoms free of the disease of the dragons, they had to make certain that the realm would not fall into war anew, and for that, they needed a mouth at the ear of every High Lord they could reach. It had even worked, for a little while, and Walgrave remembered with a wave of bitterness how he had read every scrap of parchment detailing promises of marriage and fosterage with delight in those early years. But someone whispered, and even a soft breath of a word of treachery was enough to wake the mad dragon.

_Rickard. Brandon._ My son. _Our plans turned to ash, and even in victory, it went wrong._

His hands stilled in their work, a fine tremor shaking them, and he sat back from the desk lest a tear mar the delicate parchments. He let himself have the space of a breath, then another, before he leaned forward again, briskly taking up quill and ink and scattering fresh parchments across the desk, filling them with his cramped but precise script. Things moved too fast. For men who had planned for generations, suddenly there was no time. He had well less than a candlemark to finish, and it would do no good to wallow in memories. In silence he filled the slips of paper with words, grim determination driving him as his hands and body cramped with strain.

Too few. There were too few of these missives. For all that he had the run of the rookery and the swift, fragile secrecy it granted them, there were fewer and fewer men of the circle to send them to out in the world. They had been stunned by the Rebellion, and complacent ever since. Most members of the circle of conspirators were Archmaesters in service at the Citadel – they had become altogether too successful, in some ways. In a time of war as bloody as this, outside of Oldtown’s protection, Maesters died like other men. Even within the Citadel, their circle had enemies and spies. And so the burden had fallen to him to allay their suspicions. It did not matter if it bound him to this tower, he reasoned. As much as he hated the birds, he had begun to hate everything outside of this place far more.

Swiftly, carefully, he set the birds loose from the tower, the dark moon hiding their passage from any prying eye, and he hastened to clean up the evidence of his work this evening. The boy would rise soon, and stupid as he was, even he might notice a handful of blotting papers, sand and wax from the preparation of a dozen messages. He was an old man who moved slowly, and he cursed as he saw the pink fingers of dawn creeping through the window. Hastily, he smudged his gray cassock with dust, pulled at his lower lip to moisten it with saliva, affecting a trickle of drool there, and rumpled his hair as he fell into his bed, closing his eyes for a scant moment’s rest. He did not rest long. His illuminating torch was growing heavier by the day, and his bones ached.

“Cressen?” he forced himself to call out querulously as he heard the door open and the fool boy shuffle in. “Is that you?”


End file.
